This invention relates to a container in which artist's pastels can be safely stored and transported without breaking and in which the surface of the pastels can be cleaned between uses.
Artist's pastels are sticks of compressed chalk and pigment which are applied to a surface by rubbing the pastels against the surface. Pastels are soft and tend to crumble easily. Their softness makes them easy to apply to a surface such as paper but at the same time causes several problems.
One problem is that the pastels become discolored and unidentifiable during use. This is because pastel dust rubs off each pastel stick onto an artist's hands, and the artist's fingers transfer dust from one pastel stick to the next pastel stick being touched. When the artist works with a plurality of pastels, all the pastels become coated by, and discolored from, the dust transferred among the pastels, and it becomes extremely difficult to determine the color of a pastel which has been discolored in this way. This problem is compounded by the problem of pastel dust rubbing off of pastels and accumulating in the bottom of containers used to store and transport the pastels. Such accumulations of pastel dust also tend to contact and coat pastels stored or transported in such containers. Such coatings discolor the surfaces of pastels and make it difficult for the artist to judge the hue, value and/or chroma of the pastels and thereby make it very difficult for the artist to use the pastels.
Heretofore, artists have generally removed such discoloring coatings of pastel dust from their pastels by rubbing the dust off of the pastels with a rag. However, this has been an inefficient and time-consuming solution to the problem. Artists have also removed such coatings by placing their pastels in special containers filled with rice granules and then agitating the pastels and rice together in the container. During such agitation, the rice granules have scrubbed the surfaces of the pastels with a mild abrasive action, thereby removing discoloring coatings of pastel dust from the pastels' surfaces. However, rice-filled containers have not always been immediately available when needed to clean the pastels. Moreover, artists have frequently found it convenient to take special rice-filled containers with them on trips during which they intend to work with their pastels.
Another problem is that pastels frequently are broken when they bump against one another and against the walls of a container in which they are stored, particularly when the pastels are being transported, for example, to a location for sketching.
There has, therefore, been a need for a container in which pastels can be safely stored and transported while being prevented from becoming discolored by pastel dust transferred between pastels in the container. There has also been a need for a convenient way of removing coatings of pastel dust which discolor the surface of pastels without using special cleaning procedures and/or devices.